WEEK 37
Hey there, thanks for joining us for Week 37 of HOMwork 2020!
This week, we have the one and only Jessica Hische as a guest teacher!!!
For the handful of people who don’t know her, Jessica Hische is a lettering artist, illustrator, NYT best-selling author, and self-described “avid internetter” working in Oakland, California. For nearly 15 years, she’s had the pleasure of collaborating with amazing clients—creating custom lettering artwork for established brands, classic books, postage stamps, and so much more. She cut her creative teeth in Philadelphia and Brooklyn but is now (and forever) based in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. When she’s not drafting letterforms, manipulating beziers, writing kids books, or letterpressing on her Vandercook, she’s doing her best to help others find the same happiness and fulfillment that she’s found in her work.
Full transparency: this assignment is political (but like, so is everything in a way) so if that’s something that upsets you...then I humbly suggest you close this email and enjoy the rest of your day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From Jessica:
Last week, I had a good conversation with the Biden creative team. I shared that one of my concerns for the upcoming election was the lack of visible support for the campaign. There are a lot of folx within the creative world and beyond posting on social media about voting (a wonderful and necessary message), but few of those posts mention the candidates by name. It’s somewhat implied that if you’re promoting voting or voting rights that you’re likely voting Biden and encouraging a Biden vote, but it’s not explicit. There’s a “I guess I’ll vote for him if I have to” vibe throughout leftist social media, but exasperated resignation doesn’t get people to the polls.
Prior to this conversation, I received an email from Scott Thomas (who led the design for Obama’s original campaign in 2008), about participating in a get-out-the-vote project he’s spearheading about “unity” (which also doesn’t mention Biden/Harris by name). After our conversation, I got the phrase “Rise Up. Show Up. Unite!” in my head and just couldn’t shake it.
I decided to create a lettering piece around this phrase and reached out to my friend Adé Hogue about joining me. He immediately said yes. As we passed sketches back and forth we schemed about turning our one-off personal project into a full campaign, inviting other artists from the lettering and design community to participate.
As artists with large online followings, we feel a responsibility to use our platforms to help causes we believe in and try to bring positive change to the world when possible—even if that means losing a few followers along the way. Nearly every person we reached out to enthusiastically signed on — just over twenty artists in total. See all the pieces and learn more about the project here.
Our goal as a group, as stated above, is to get people not only voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris but talking about voting for them out loud. Many of us supported different candidates in the primary but understand and strongly believe that we must unite behind the team that has a real chance of defeating Donald Trump and steering America in the right direction—a team that will only win if we fully and enthusiastically support them.
Your assignment: Create your own art using the phrase “Rise up. Show up. Unite!”
You can find a template with the Biden/Harris logo to get you started here (Open the pdf in Adobe Illustrator to grab the vector logo). When you post art, tag @votejoe (an account managed by the Biden campaign) and @time2unite (Scott Thomas’s unity project) and include the hashtag #riseupshowupunite.
Politically neutral assignment: Create your own art of the word "Vote"
We strongly encourage anyone planning to vote Biden/Harris to participate in the first assignment. If you still want to participate in the challenge but want to do so in a more politically neutral way, illustrate the word "Vote" and encourage people to visit vote.org in your post for more information about voting.
Don’t forget to use the hashtag #HOMwork2020 & tag @jessicahische and @homsweethom when you post your work, too! We’ll be sharing our favorites in our Stories all week!
x Jessica & Lauren
P.S. If you want to be a part of this project but don’t have time to create artwork, you’re welcome to share the art we have created (you can find it all on instagram under the hashtag #riseupshowupunite). Just make sure to tag the original artist in the image and caption.
P.P.S. Did you know Jessica and I got tattoos together in 2018? We each drew an ampersand for each other because we both felt like we missed out on the classic graphic designer tattoo. Here’s what she drew for me:
